Valve fined for poor customer service - <AUTHOR> https://technicality.io/valve-fined-for-poor-customer-service/ <comment><USER2> Valve should admit fault and pay the fine. Although they finally have a refund system in place on Steam these days, previously their system could be considered borderline fraudulent.

In the past, I bought ~3 3-D games that claimed Mac support, but turned out to be completely non-functional on the platform because I had an Intel GPU. Upon pointing it out to Valve and the developers, they would deny fault, and reply that I should have read the system requirements more carefully. That may be true, but given that the majority of all Macs sold today come with Intel chipsets, there should have been a marquee warning in a 50 point font indicating that Mac is "kind of" supported, but not really.

<comment><USER3> Also, while it would obviously not catch every case, a warning that hey, this game won't work on your current system seems like a pretty low bar. The valve clients definitely can and I think do capture system hardware.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, the Steam Store in the client is just a browser loading a page from the Steam website. Could they put the system info in a cookie?

<comment><USER5> > the Steam Store in the client is just a browser loading a page from the > Steam website.

No one told them they had to architect it that way. It'd be a reasonable requirement to have the purchasing experience from within the desktop client be aware of what the computer running the client can actually support. If that means doing something a little bit smarter than a simple embedded browser, then so be it. The Google Play Store knows which apps are and aren't compatible with all of my devices, and I don't consider that to be an especially high bar (but rather, the minimum).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > General Counsel for Valve. Mr Quackenbush testified that Valve did not > obtain legal advice when it started selling games in Australia and did not > consider its obligations until the Australian Competition and Consumer > Commission began investigating.

That is just a bad idea.

The ACCC fiercely enforce Consumer Law, and are doubling down on efforts all across the country.

Consumer Law is an enormous benefit for citizens of Australia, and though the ACCC is still doing education campaigns on it, retailers dealing with Australia better damn well know their obligations.

All it takes is one Australian customer reporting it to the ACCC, and then they assign a lawyer to the case. It is easy for the consumer to protect their rights. So know them, and provide them.

<comment><USER4> Why don't we have something like this in the US?

<comment><USER7> You still can't transfer money between bank accounts, use a sensible system for measuring anything or advertise correct costs (non-included sales tax, tipping, etc.). I think you've got some more basic issues to tackle before getting to something advanced like this. :P

<comment><USER8> Fahrenheit is a very sensible system. 0: it's cold. 100: it's very hot. 50: so so depends on what you perceive.

<comment><USER5> Celcius is way more sensible. 0: Water freezes (cold). 10: Cool. 20: Moderate. 30: Nice and warm. 40: Hot. 100: Water boils.

I say this as an American, by the way. We need to stop defending our archaic system. It just makes us look dumb. Literally the entire rest of the world has moved on, and is just laughing at us.

But we're digressing now and this comments section isn't about us not getting on board with SI.

<comment><USER9> In what way is the progression you described more sensible?

In Fahrenheit the entire "scale" is useful to describe weather. If I turned a knob that set the temperature of a room to 0% rotation, or 0 degrees, the room would be cold. If I set the knob to 100% rotation, or 100 degrees the room will be hot.

In Celcius the scale is arbitrarily cut off at 40. The resolution that you can represent a temperature at is severely limited if you don't have a decimal point.

I don't know anyone who went to school in the US and didn't learn SI units. Science in the US uses SI units. Fahrenheit is just a very convenient way to express weather on a 0% to 100% scale.

>Literally the entire rest of the world has moved on, and is just laughing at us.

Maybe young kids with nothing better to do on the internet. As an American born outside of the US who's traveled a lot, one thing people tend to agree on is Fahrenheit is very convenient for weather.

The parent post of all of this is provocative nonsense (I mean really, apparently this person doesn't know that we can do instant bank transfers, and fails to understand that sales tax isn't a constant across states and even county lines in some places)

<comment><USER5> Temperature is important for a lot more than just weather. Fahrenheit starts breaking down more once you start using it for other purposes. And why should we have different scales for weather versus other common things like cooking?

<comment><USER9> Are you really in America? Because I've actually never seen a cooking appliance that didn't use Fahrenheit, I just forgot that's another place where we use Fahrenheit.

>And why should we have different scales for weather versus other common things like cooking?

Because it's not (currently) useful to measure weather on the planet we call "Earth" relative to the boiling point of water.

If/when the ambient temperature starts to move in a direction where it does scale from the freezing point of water to the boiling point of water, we'll have much bigger issues than worrying about what units we're measuring weather in.

<comment><USER5> My oven, unfortunately, does use Fahrenheit, with no way to switch to Celcius. Since I'm in an apartment, that won't change. My food scale, however, does grams, and my electric kettle does Celcius.

And I would contend that it's much worse to have two separate temperature scales, one for weather and one for everything else (including cooking), than to just use one for everything. People who grow up with Celcius have no problem whatsoever using it for weather. It makes total sense. Once you've used it exclusively for a month, it'll make total sense to you too. I promise. I frequently run into people who _forget_ that water freezes at 32 and boils at 212. It's much harder to forget the numbers 0 and 100.

<comment><USER9> As I said I'm not from the US originally, I've lived in countries with Celsius for a lot longer than a year...

You're building the strawman argument that the only reason people use Fahrenheit is the cognitive load of switching then tearing it down.

Frankly it's a bit condescending.. (oh you don't _really_ want to use Fahrenheit, you're just too lazy not to, don't worry it's easy to switch!)

And it's false, as evidenced by people in England and other countries I've visited who still refer to weather in Fahrenheit at times.

It really is the more expressive scale for weather, and even people who _don 't_ use it and despise Imperial units are usually up front in at least admitting it as such.

People don't usually need to remember when water boils or freezes when thinking about weather, or even cooking since cooking occurs at temperatures both well above and just below boiling. They know around 0 degrees it can snow and around 100 degrees they might get heat stroke if they're not careful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Valve where advertising laws don't apply to you.

[http://i.imgur.com/N3dEPjE.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/N3dEPjE.jpg)

The image above doesn't do justice to how bad the experience is as a customer, the tv show is already released in the US, but they make international customers wait to watch it. ( after buying it as if it was fully released ) and of course customer support tells you to post in the forums for help...

<comment><USER11> Valve doesn't get to decide how content creators set regional distribution policies anymore than Netflix, Youtube, or Hulu does. This problem exists across all similar platforms.

<comment><USER10> I've actually contacted the Studio first and they threw the ball back at Valve/Steam :)

Neither even acknowledge the region locking. ( to be fair, customer support doesn't know any of that )

<comment><USER12> And as usual, piracy wins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Valve's Steam is a notorious… hmm, what would be the most charitable word… cesspit, now? Over a third of its entire library was added in 2016. Since the introduction of Greenlight, Valve has apparently ceased performing even the most basic quality control. There have been games on Steam that lack an actual game executable, and that's to say nothing of the games which actually do "run".

Maybe consumer protection suits will light enough of a flame under the right part of their corporate anatomy for Valve to start caring again.

<comment><USER14> I get so irritated at the complaints that steam had the gall to allow you to buy a bad game. I'd much rather have an open market of goods than a closed censored market.

If you're risk adverse, wait for the reviews.

<comment><USER15> I'm just annoyed that unfinished products are listed alongside everything else on the front page. I don't browse anymore... If something interesting comes out, I'll find out about it eventually, through other means.

<comment><USER13> It's not fair on developers, either. It undermines consumer confidence in any game they see on the platform, and it unnecessarily clogs up the "new realeases" list, giving you less chance at people seeing your game.

<comment><USER16> > it unnecessarily clogs up the "new realeases" list, giving you less chance > at people seeing your game.

This complaint, while understandable, is not taking into account all of the reality in play here.

Steam was a curated trickle before, representing only a fraction of the flow of game creation, increasing chances at (but not guaranteeing) a certain level of quality, as well as a certain level of income for anyone making it in. It did however also leave out a lot of the total amount of creation. It was not a faithful representation of the entire market.

By opening the gates Steam now represents a bigger (though not total) part of the market, and now works more similarly to how the markets for books, audiobooks, music albums or movies work. Creators in these markets have been laboring under much more strenuous conditions, successfully, for many decades.

The "clogging" you decry is not useless, as it increases the breadth of content people can access (to give one example, Brigador would probably be dead now, given that it's ignored by media, despite being an excellent game, if it couldn't claw out a solid reputation on Steam month by month) and it's not unfair, as it's just how all other media creators had to live for a long time.

You could however blame Valve for not providing more solid search and filtering tools.

<comment><USER17> Brigador is a game that is finished and not a hastily cobbled mess of stock assets. It would easily pass basic quality control, and could get even more attention without trash making it hard to find.

With a normal book or an album you at least have to put in the effort to make it yourself. Steam does not need the equivalent of a robot's print-on-demand wikipedia article compilation.

<comment><USER16> Without Greenlight being what it is, Brigador would never have gotten in. They can't even get anything but the tiniest youtube/web reviewers to look at it because it's not the "right aesthetic".

> With a normal book [...] you at least have to put in the effort to make it > yourself.

Not so, Amazon has plenty of algorithmically generated books in its store, and even in bookstores, which are curated by default, you can find plenty of outright shit.

Also keep in mind i was responding to the complaint about the "what's new" list, which is something that was, is and remains useless in any store giving access to a huge market. (Steam's Discover Queue is really useful though and replaces it with an appropiately personalized What's New list.)

<comment><USER17> > Without Greenlight being what it is, Brigador would never have gotten in.

Valve could pay a couple people to check games to make sure they're not 10-developer-hours trash. It's not a choice between "allow everything" or "super-popular games only".

> Not so, Amazon has plenty of algorithmically generated books in its store

That's why I said normal book, and explicitly gave an example of how Amazon can be worse.

> even in bookstores, which are curated by default, you can find plenty of > outright shit.

That's okay. I don't want steam to protect me from merely 'bad' games. I want it to reject games that don't even try, or aren't even half done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To Valve's credit, they generally have taken a pretty reasonable stance, both in cases where they defended the customer and cases where they defended the developer. I think Valve has taken a harsh stance on refunds because it is something that can be rather easy to abuse. That said, Valve has a lot of money to spare and I am sometimes surprised they don't cut their bottom line to increase loyalty among developers AND consumers (i.e. maybe cover refunds out of Valve's pocket rather than the developers, in cases where it makes sense). This is not entirely different from how many brick and mortar stores operate.

</comment><comment><USER7> >If you are unable to establish a legal compliance program alongside your growth plan, then consider managing your risk through good customer service. A high standard of service will likely meet most consumer laws and win you more customers.

Good advice.

</comment><comment><USER19> Valve have become a behemoth despite being one of the most lethargic and inflexible companies around. They're by far the most profitable company to employee ratio and you'd think they would be more capable of taking control of these numerous situations and dealing with them, but they just leave all these problems to fester until it damages both them and their customers. I just don't get what their problem is.

<comment><USER20> Valve don't have investors or tons of shareholders to put pressure on them and company operated in quite unique way. Downside is that no one at company have time to deal with every problem even important ones.

According to some developers who visited office few years ago all Steam was literally developed and maintained by a "team" with less than 20 people or so. So Valve itself have very little number of employees, but very few of them working on anything Steam-related.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Set aside whether or not refund is deserved (I'm leaning toward yes?)

If I have a business in the US, and sell software online for USD, do I now need to prohibit international users from purchasing my software? I can't possibly comply with the laws in every jurisdiction. For now, the US alone is painful and complicated enough.

<comment><USER22> The converse is allowing US companies to break the law in other jurisdictions. Imagine if Valve just kept the money and didn't deliver the games at all? Surely you have to comply with the law everywhere you operate.

<comment><USER23> Define 'operate' though.

<comment><USER6> In the cited case, operate means:

* Sell in local currency

* Accept local billing addresses

* Have hardware in local geography

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I imagine this will continue to be a hard problem.

It's extremely easy to set up a site and collect payments for a digital product. Almost by default, Australians might start purchasing goods.

So if I'm using Stripe, now Stripe is in the mess too if I get in local trouble. Or is it Visa?

Used to be that you would rrequire some physical presence in a country, but nowadays...

I imagine a lot of people are in contravention of a lot of a lot of minor reporting requirements in certain countries. There's probably a big market for "TurboTax but for everywhere".

<comment><USER6> > So if I'm using Stripe, now Stripe is in the mess too if I get in local > trouble. Or is it Visa?

No. You are.

Part of setting up these payment gateways is an acknowledgement that you have the right to sell your product in the jurisdiction.

<comment><USER24> Right, but let's say a foreign court passes judgement on you, and you disappear. Stripe (or its partner bank in the region) is holding some of your cash. I could see a seizure happening.

I imagine financial institutions have insurance for this sort of thing though.

But let's replace Stripe with Shopify. Or some other service providers. I can see execution of court orders being tricky in practice

<comment><USER6> If you vanish, and have owing, then the civil forfeiture laws do come into play.

Visa and others do indeed have insurance policies in effect for such reasons, which is actually the area that gives me most of my experience in this area.

Seizure of goods does happen regularly, and if a provider refuses to play ball, then quite often their accounts are frozen, and processors who have a presence in Australia, like Mastercard and Visa, freeze the providers transactions as well.

Until such time as your funds are released to the relevant body, so they can arrange compensation and bankruptcy or receivership duties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The most important judgment in relation to this case is Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Valve Corporation (No 3) [2016] FCA 196, from March this year. [http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi- bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/FCA/...](http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi- bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/FCA/2016/196.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> I have never ran afoul of Steam, but for some reason I always assumed that they had great customer service. How I formed that opinion I am not sure, as is evident I am appallingly wrong.

I appreciate it is hard to give anything other than boilerplate legalese to most customers when they throw the book at you, but this customer mentioned in the article even asked to have his case escalated. Fault lies solely with Valve as far as I can see.

</comment><comment><USER27> Valve's refund policy is pretty amazing, <2 hours played and <14 days and you're good. Better than Google's even.

I've refunded games for being made in 2016 and not DPI scaling on 4k properly. Wonder if this guy did something ridiculous and then tried to refund it, it seems like Valve's reasons are conveniently edited out in this very one-sided post.

<comment><USER6> > 41\. As to the Steam Refund Policies, the three relevant versions of those > refund policies are as follows:

> (1) the 2011-2013 refund policy (1 January 2011 to April 2013) (Court Book p > 553);

> (2) the 2013-2014 refund policy (April 2013 to 23 July 2014) (Court Book p > 555); and

> (3) the 2014-2015 refund policy (24 July 2014 to 18 March 2015) (Court Book > p 349).

There were also four witnesses, who contested that Valve did not abide by the Consumer Law regulations.

Anecdata is hardly appropriate as counter-evidence when a judicial hearing has been made. Evidence from both parties was presented, and considered.

The finding was in the favour of those consumers who Valve denied refunds to.

<comment><USER27> I'm not arguing that they didn't violate something legally, just that it seems stupid.

What exactly did they violate? It seems against common logic if they're within the bounds their own website offers here.

<comment> ux-app > if they're within the bounds their own website offers here

In Australia "within the bounds of your own website" doesn't hold water. Australian Consumer Law trumps a site's TOS.

<comment><USER27> Sorry, that's not what I meant, I simply meant that their terms seem extremely good to me, so what exactly is the conflict with australian consumer law? Does it expect refunds to still be offered after a quite fair trial period on products labelled as "early access"? That is what seems against common sense to me.

<comment><USER6> The somewhat arbitrary played <2 hours doesn't matter at all. If it's less than 7 days from purchase, and the product is not as advertised, then the consumer is still entitled to a refund.

An example of where this might have come into play in a reasonable circumstance: No Man's Sky, where Steam had to make an exception to their usual refund policy.

A product being labelled as Early Access doesn't mean crap. It's still being sold, and purchased. So the consumer still has their purchasing rights.

And Consumer Law will always trump anything Steam forces you to sign.

<comment><USER27> It still seems a bit ridiculous when it comes to games. Most games can be beaten in less than 7 days and excuses made to get a refund under such laws, especially with early access titles. What's a company to do in such circumstances?

It's important to keep a good balance between consumer protection and productive economy. I think the law is in the wrong here, not Valve in this case. As someone else has pointed out though, this may have been prior to Steam's refund policy being added.

<comment><USER6> A change of mind isn't a refund. It's false or misleading advertising that is.

<comment><USER27> But Valve's current policy clearly seems sufficient to protect against this just fine - the Australian consumer protection law takes it ridiculously far, especially for a small development shop working on a product advertised as "early access".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> At what point is a video game seller obligated to provide a refund to unhappy customers? It seems like there's a large gray area between a feature complete/bug free game and one that's completely unplayable.

<comment><USER23> This is the blessing and the curse of Australian Consumer Law. It states:

> _Goods must be of merchantable quality – they must meet a level of quality > and performance that would be reasonable to expect, given their price and > description._

> _Goods must be fit for their intended purpose_

While this gives consumers a fair bit of protection (for instance, this wording forces Apple (and others) to provide min 2 years warranty on iPhones), it can be difficult in some circumstances to establish what 'reasonable' means. Generally speaking though, common sense prevails.

<comment><USER6> > reasonable to expect, given their price and description

Insurance market price tends to be the guiding star on what represents reasonableness. That and precedents that have already been set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is ridiculous. What would be the legal implications of ignoring the fine? What jurisdiction does Australia have here?

<comment><USER6> Valve has around 2 million registered Australian customers, from the judgement, have rackspace and other servers in Australia.

They are likely to appeal the ruling, but if they didn't, and ignored the fine, the courts have the right to seize property up to the value owed.

What part do you find ridiculous? A company operating in a nation not following said nation's obvious rules?</comment></comment>


Amazon and Oracle: Fluffy white bear-traps?  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/the-oracle-oracle/2011/02/amazon-and-oracle-fluffy-white-bear-traps/index.htm <comment><AUTHOR> This is a really useful discussion on the potential pitfall of using Amazon's cloud service to run your Oracle apps.</comment>


Facebook Data Suggests the Higher Social Class Have Fewer International Friends - <AUTHOR> http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/facebook-data-suggests-people-from-higher-social-class-have-fewer-international-friends <comment><USER2> I think the study is trying to link two quite unrelated aspects through a narrow lens of anonymized "international" friendship links. What constitutes international? Is any link outside of your own country considered international?

To me, this chart seems to highlight countries that have relatively open borders with its neighbors, or countries where immigrants as percentage of population is high because of economic opportunities and such. Consider Saudi Arabia or Oman, which gets a lot of immigrants from all over the Muslim world, which seems to be one of the most "international" countries. This inference seems counter to the fact that many of those countries are not as open to international businesses as say, Singapore or Hong Kong. Nor are they poor countries per se.

<comment><USER3> I couldn't find anything in the study that shows how friendship is defined within in anonymized data set:

> Facebook provided data on every friendship formed in 2011 in every country > in the world at the national aggregate level. These data set included a > total of 57,457,192,520 friendships.

So there's a few problems with language here...one of them being...what does "every friendship formed in 2011" mean? The friendship was actually _made_ in 2011? Or that the friendship record existed as of the 2011 snapshot of the database? I'd have to imagine the former but if it's just the latter...then "friendships made by all users in one given year" is massively different than "all friendships of all users".

Second, in 2011, FB's interface was different than it is today. Maybe they've always had this data in the backend...but were users able to have multiple locations listed as part of their user profile in 2011? My hazy recollection is that you were able to list your location...and after the Dec. 2011 roll out of Timeline [1], then you started being much more granular about your life and location, because Facebook wants to be the yearbook of your life or something.

If we assume that an international friendship is made by two users who have locations in two different countries...OK...well, anecdotally speaking, I went to a Midwest college..we didn't have FB at the time but I imagine if we did, most/many students would have put the university as their current location/network. Even though the number of international friends I had substantially increased, if the data isn't captured at a granular level, it just looks like I made friends with a whole bunch more midwesterners.

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/timeline-now- availab...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/timeline-now-available- worldwide/10150408488962131)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I upvoted this. Just because we need more reminders of how awful published research can be...and yet, I'll be the first to admit that upon seeing the headline, I thought: "Oh yeah, that makes sense, my rich friend Bob is the biggest xenophobe I know", mixed in with "Fucking facebook and their ice- bucket-dumping morons" type of faux-highbrow sentiment.

Just like headlines are a standardized way of trumpeting a claim, it'd be nice to have a semi-standardized format for quantifying the scope and details of methodology.

edit: The more interesting part was the first "micro" study, in which people consented to handing over their FB network. But reading the actual details gives me additional doubt, though I can't say I'm very knowledgeable about what's been done so far to correct for MTurk quality issues in academic studies:

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915004973)

> We recruited 1069 individuals from Amazon's Mechanical Turk who lived in the > United States to participate in the study in exchange for $1.00....

> [in the conclusion]... Second, our sample in Study 1 consisted of MTurk > users which are not representative of the general US population. While MTurk > users tend to be as good—if not better—than typical undergraduate samples > (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011), future work should endeavor to recruit > a nationally representative sample to further corroborate the results.

edit2: I'm kind of interested in the type of person who, over MTurk or not, would hand over their Facebook network for a dollar? I mean I'm sure lots of people would do that, but still...

And the study they reference in terms of claiming that MTurk users are more representative than the undergrads that studies usually pick from...The study was done in 2011. I know MTurk has been around for awhile, but has much changed about its demographic? For example, I'd be very suspicious of a study based on Uber that depended on driver analysis from even as late as 2014, given the kind of turnover that has happened.

<comment><USER4> Without having read the article, based on your comment it sounds like I should just ignore the whole thing and not waste my time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious how they took into consideration the fact that recent immigrants can often fall into the lower social classes while having many connections to family and friends in their home country. Edit: It seems like they didn't even look at the social class of the people they interviewed. They just focused on the GDP of their country which doesn't make any sense imo.

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems like really bad research. Correlating international friendships to a countries GDP would only make sense if every person in the world was on facebook.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, probably the most connected in poorer countries are just more likely to be on Facebook than the average person in their country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So social class is now based on national GDP?

Why not just say people from richer countries have fewer international friends then?

Seems like poorly thought out "research".

<comment><USER9> Because it might as well be relative, some one flipping burgers in Kentucky probably earns more per week than a family in Bangladesh does in a month (if not a year, considering their poverty line is 2$ a day) but they won't be considered high social class in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow. So Facebook has discovered that the US is both a large AND wealthy country. This is revolutionary.

</comment><comment><USER11> From the study: "[I]t is possible that migration flows could be a potential mechanism behind this effect. ... However, we do note that we found evidence against a migration explanation in Study 2."

But Study 2 appears to have actually looked at the relationship between GDP per capita (on a country-level basis) and number of international friends per capita (again on a country-level basis). GDP per capita between countries seems like a poor proxy for social class between people within the same society. Even if people in rich countries have fewer international friends than do people in poor countries, does that really indicate my rich neighbor is likely to have fewer international friends than does my poor neighbor?

Edit: looks like zopppo already pointed out this issue before I refreshed.</comment>


Theorem Has Created A New Way To Buy And Sell Online - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/15/shop-theorem-has-created-a-new-way-of-buying-and-selling-stuff-online/

<comment><USER2> Congrats, Ryan and team on launching! Just placed an offer on some shorts and it was an easy process. Interested to see how this model works out for you guys moving forward.

Something pretty cool I noticed as I was checking out was the ability to share my offer on FB to get a small discount (which I did). This seems like a pretty obvious 'growth hack', but I'm surprised I haven't seen it elsewhere before.</comment>


Please – A Cross-Language Build System - <AUTHOR> https://please.build <comment><USER2> I'd say meson is the most direct competitor. They don't mention it in the FAQ though.

[http://mesonbuild.com/](http://mesonbuild.com/)

<comment><USER3> >supported languages include C, C++, D, Fortran, Java, Rust

So it isn't general purpose?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cross language but not cross platform -- no windows support, and none planned.

<comment><USER2> Noted. [https://github.com/qznc/annoying-build- systems#please](https://github.com/qznc/annoying-build-systems#please)

<comment><USER5> No love for D's DUB on your list?

<comment><USER2> I left out package managers from all languages and focused on generic build systems. The line is blurry though. Feel free to send a pull request.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I Googled to find the repository of a build system I wanted to mention and stumbled upon something else that I found interesting; [https://shakebuild.com/](https://shakebuild.com/)

> Shake is a library for writing build systems. Most large projects have a > custom-written build system, and developers working on the project are > likely to run the build system many times a day, spending a noticeable > amount of time waiting for the build system. This document explains why you > might pick Shake over alternative tools for writing build systems (e.g. > make, Ant, Scons).

[https://shakebuild.com/why](https://shakebuild.com/why)

Shake is written in Haskell and is open source.

<comment><USER7> One of the larger public projects working to migrate to shake over time is ghc. The current ghc build system uses a recursive make setup, and all that such entails. (:

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since this thread has long since devolved into a discussion about build systems in general: if you don't need a build system with Windows support, go with tup which is otherwise awesome. If you don't care about bloat in your dev tools, go with meson (modern scons replacement). If you need cross platform and don't like requirements on needless runtimes, I'm still searching for a good replacement for cmake (BSD Makefiles accomplish much of the same with a saner syntax just not as portably unless you need the ninja/msvc/qt/xcode intermediate build files).

Premake was promising but I fear it fell victim to early hype syndrome.

<comment><USER9> What's wrong with tup on windows? (I've never used it on windows, but its docs say that windows is supported).

<comment><USER8> Tup requires fuse because they use fuse to monitor the file system for changes instead of kqueue/inotify/FindFirstChangeNotification.

Fuse support on Windows is a no-go, very unstable, broken, and unavailable by default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why do all these build systems have magic built-in rules and special syntax? Custom languages, etc.

makefiles without any magic are comprehensible, but people quickly add magic :(

<comment><USER9> gnumake has at least a half-dozen magic built-in rules, no?

<comment><USER11> A bit more than a half dozen, but mostly inconsequential:

[https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Catalogue...](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Catalogue- of-Rules.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have used please, on a project also written by the please developers, of which I am not.

While my experience of `plz` may have been mired by the project that used it, I can't say I found it added anything special.

It arguably doesn't meet the needs of the `plz` developers themselves, as evidenced by the custom build-rules in the project that overrode the built- ins. And at one point, it was suggested to us that we drop Plz and move to buck/bazel/pants which was suggested would be a relatively simple replacement.

Sure, it built stuff, but the general impression was it got in the way, while due to the way it was configured, was essential to keeping the project running.

And why are there 20 releases on the 25th of November?

</comment><comment><USER13> > Also we chose the domain name before almost anything else (priorities!).

I'm glad I'm not the only one with this problem :P

</comment><comment><USER14> This looks so similar to Bazel..

What's the advantage of using Please?

<comment><USER15> It's tuned to the preferences of another company; if you prefer their taste on the finer points, that's one. Secondly, it's written in Go, so installation should be simpler.

<comment><USER16> What's hard about "brew install bazel"?

<comment><USER17> Why should I have to install the jdk for a build tool when I'm not using Java myself?

<comment><USER18> i don't notice people complaining about needing ruby, python, perl or other things installed for a given tool that depends on them nearly as much as java. interesting.

<comment><USER19> I actually do (internally) complain when some tool uses python/perl/ruby. It's usually painful to install and maintain compared to most C or Go in this case.

Especially virtualenvs are an axe I like to grind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When it comes to a build system with Python-like syntax, I prefer Waf ([https://github.com/waf-project/waf](https://github.com/waf-project/waf)) to the rest of the competing solutions. It's written in Python, provides excellent support for many build scenarios, but can be extended with Python scripts without any restrictions, and has minimal dependencies (literally, you can supply Waf packed binary with your project and it'll work on all major platforms that have Python).

</comment><comment><USER21> Meson and Ninja being adopted by gnome is game changing

</comment><comment><USER22> I dislike that the only way they list to install is "curl [https://get.please.build](https://get.please.build) | bash". I know it's fast and easy but it really leaves your computer at their mercy.

<comment><USER23> How? It's over HTTPS, and you're already trusting them to execute code on your system... and it's not even root...

I see no way in which this "leaves your computer at their mercy" more than any other process of purposefully executing code they control on your system.

<comment><USER24> I agree with the point you're making and you clearly know what you're talking about but:

I would caution you to use the phrase "no way in which" when discussing security - the less informed may read this and believe it.

While an edge case and requiring a mailicious targeted attack in this case there's at least the possibility of being MiTM'd.

The problem - as you're probably aware - with using absolute terms when speaking about a case like this is that it's easy to extrapolate this sense of safety to something that may lead to an attack that requires much less precision thank convincing the browser that the MiTM proxy is "please.build".

<comment><USER25> >the less informed may read this and believe it.

What they should be doing is to understand what's actually going on.

Once you download and run software from a TLS enabled website, you're putting trust in that website. It doesn't really matter if you are doing 'curl [https://example.com](https://example.com) | bash' or downloading a binary. They can't be MITMed any more so with the curl way than downloading a binary.

That's all there is to it. I realize there are many security people who advice against doing the curl thing, but I feel people should realize it is a rule of thumb with unsecured websites.

<comment><USER24> Completely agree that they should understand what's going on however:

It's sometimes easy to forget that there are various reasons people are less informed. For people early in the career for example, reading security advice on HN and believing it is not unheard of especially when you have real experts on here who know what they're talking about.

Something that is "all there is to it" for you is not necessarily the same for someone else. I'm not saying it's anyones job to inform them; just that it's better not to speak in absolutes.

If security folks say something, I assume there's a good reason until I become a security folk myself - it's one of those fields where being sceptical about everything third-party helps.

My point really wasn't about the MITM but a there's always a possibility that a proxy on a public/compromised network can intervene between you and a "secured" website.

Binaries can be verified with checksums to make sure that the artifact hosted on the repository is indeed what you received. You are 100% correct that you are still trusting the code from the third party developer though!

<comment><USER25> >My point really wasn't about the MITM but a there's always a possibility that a proxy on a public/compromised network can intervene between you and a "secured" website.

Same can happen to a binary.

>Binaries can be verified with checksums to make sure that the artifact hosted on the repository is indeed what you received

Here's the problem. The checksum is usually on the same page the binary is located. Which pretty much defeats the purpose.

<comment><USER24> I see, and this was your original point.

I guess the only threat there (that I can see) is that the install script can be malicious, but your point was that you're trusting the owners of the website anyway by downloading their binary and executing their code locally. It can be argued that it's probably easier to ship malicious code outside the main repository (e.g. in an install script) but I do not have a good counter besides this weak argument.

The checksum is indeed usually on the same page and does make it useless in my hypothetical MITM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The name is not very google friendly. It took me a bit longer than I would have liked to find examples for my specific use-case.

<comment><USER27> I could see them using "plzbuild" as their version of "golang", for the same problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Apologies in advance for shitting on this, but PLEASE STOP BUILDING BUILD SYSTEMS.

We already have a serious incompatibility problem with projects using autotools vs CMake vs Meson vs gyp vs Boost.Build vs SCons vs BUCK vs... and now we throw Please onto the pile.

It sucks when you find a smallish library and discover it uses an esoteric build system whose dependencies dwarf the library themselves (cough Yoga). The OSS community needs build system consolidation, not tacking on a 15th wheel to the cart.

Read the FAQ, it's just bananas:

> It [Bazel] is a great system but we have slightly different goals

> We preferred [Buck] to other options available, but again we're focused on > different goals

> we didn't think it [Pants] was the ideal fit for us at the time

"All other systems had slightly different goals or weren't the exactly ideal fit, so rather than contribute to or extend them we poured an enormous amount of energy into rebuilding them in a slightly different way."

Relevant: [http://www.rojtberg.net/1481/do-not-use- meson/](http://www.rojtberg.net/1481/do-not-use-meson/)

<comment><USER29> PRs welcome

This is awful demanding. Not entirely unexpected in tech tho

"Why don't others fix my frustration in open source projects!" they shout with no hint of irony

<comment><USER30> Please don't make such low-effort, insinuating, cliche comments on Hacker News. It makes the reading experience very poor.

Consider that the parent comment author might already be making pull requests to the projects of his interest. The snarky "PRs welcome" is therefore unnecessary and unwelcome. Everyone here knows PRs are welcome in an open source project. Some of us do send PRs. But whether someone sends PRs or not has no bearing on whether one can appreciate or criticize an idea as long as it is done in a substantive manner.

In fact, whether the parent comment author sends PRs or not is orthogonal to his complaint that we have too many build systems that is increasing the burden on users and maintainers. If you have something to say against this point, please do so on its own merit in a substantive manner without insinuations or ad-hominem attacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Very cool site!

</comment><comment><USER32> Why would I use this instead of Nix?

<comment><USER33> Do people use Nix for building and deploying project dependencies? Example project? Can you consume the result in a format that isn't all Nix-y symlinked?

<comment><USER32> nixpkgs contains tools for building Docker-compatible container images with `dockerTools`, and also AppImage-style standalone executables with `nix- bundle`.

My project, as well as many other projects, ships its own default.nix for builds. Linking an example would deanonymize this account a little too much, but there's plenty of examples out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Please bazel, buck or pants?

<comment><USER16> Since Bazel is a version of the thing everybody is copying (Google's internal build system Blaze) I would say Bazel is most likely the best of the bunch.

I've used Buck; it's slow. I haven't tried Pants.

<comment><USER34> I've used blaze for 2.5 years, best build system ever, but haven't used at all "pants please or buck"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So err... where is C# / Mono in all this?

</comment><comment><USER36> Nice work, I will try using it on my next project. 404 Not Found WinLover at localhost.

<comment><USER18> is the 404 thing humor? the meaning is a bit unclear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> this looks very interesting! Has anyone used it before?

<comment><USER3> >well I tried but they dont have samples so I gave up, no point in spending hours in reading docs and setting up something for a build system that may be useless. It also seemed suspiciously identical to bazel with really no features that may be special in any way? I mean really, why use this and not just bazel. The webpage doesnt even say

I agree with this guy. It shouldn't be that hard to include an example of an advanced script.

[https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#toc- Compl...](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#toc-Complex- Makefile-Example)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> favorite thing about it is their use of the pragmatapro font on the website

</comment><comment><USER39> Is there a problem with cmake? Why are people still inventing new build systems?

<comment><USER40> cmake cons (IMHO):

\- the archaic custom scripting language (that's its main problem)

\- there are many ways to do the same thing, resulting in each (non-trivial) build script looking different

\- for the above reason, importing dependencies written by somebody else is non-trivial, and its often better to rewrite the cmake scripts completely

\- it lacks some 'integration features' found in more modern systems like Rust's cargo: (1) proper dependency/package management (2) run targets (3) switching between build configurations should be easier (not just release/debug, also different build target platforms)

cmake pros (also IMHO):

\- can generate IDE project files (that's what most new build systems completely ignore)

\- very good cross-compilation support

\- describing a simple build is reasonably simple

\- broad support for build tools and IDEs

<comment><USER41> Microsoft (both vscode and studio) seems to be moving toward ide adaptation — parsing output from other compilers, supporting compilation databases and folder-only (non solution) projects. Perhaps this, combined with Clang viability for MSVC ABI, will reduce the impetus for cross-platform projects to use cmake just to support Windows. Of course, there's added inertia in favor of cmake due to LLVM, Boost, and others moving over. Not to mention that Microsoft now also supports the "cmake server" concept (there will be some deep irony if after 20 years of "we need cmake to support Microsoft" the argument for the next N years becomes "we should use cmake _because_ Microsoft supports it").</comment></comment></comment>


Optimizing React Apps in Practice - <AUTHOR> http://marmelab.com/blog/2017/02/06/react-is-slow-react-is-fast.html <comment><USER2> A few choice websites have definitely colored my view of React (e.g. Airbnb, multi-second delay clicking onto a form text field on current generation Android and iPhone? I hope they see some of the techniques in this article).

It's hard to know if this is due to the way the article is written but it seems like you're sacrificing both developer ergonomics and runtime performance in this situation. I am curious to hear about similar scenarios in competing frameworks like Vue.

<comment><USER3> > multi-second delay clicking onto a form text field on current generation > Android and iPhone

That doesn't make any sense. Whatever's happening there, highly unlikely it is due to React. I've run React apps on iOS for years with none of those issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't recommend reselect enough if you're using redux. Not only does it save time when computing derived data from your reducer state it also isolates your components from the structure of your reducer state. Change the location of some data in your reducer? No problem, just adjust your selector in one place and none of your components need changing.

</comment><comment><USER5> React really should be able to detect object literals in style components and optimize those away into a const under the hood. Hopefully this is fixed in a future version.

<comment><USER6> React doesn't do any "compiling". It simply takes the JS object tree that _you_ generated in your component's render function, and works from there. So yes, if you are declaring object literals in your render method, that will be a new object each time the component re-renders.

If you know that a given style object is never going to change, you can hoist it out of your component's render method into the module scope yourself.

<comment><USER5> This babel preset might do it. I haven't tried but it looks promising...

[https://babeljs.io/docs/plugins/transform-react-constant- ele...](https://babeljs.io/docs/plugins/transform-react-constant-elements/)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Spoopy.link: in-depth link scanning - <AUTHOR> https://spoopy.link <comment><USER2> I was just snooping ;) and look at what occurs when you try this: [https://spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoo...](https://spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/apispoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/spoopy.link/api/)

<comment><AUTHOR> muh api!!!!!

Don't worry, i limit redirects to a max of 4, because tbh if something redirects more than four times, its probably spoopy.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those of you who are into apis, you can do a quick GET to `/api/<url>` OR if you prefer to stream results, as they can take a bit of time to generate, you can setup a ws connection at `/<url>`. (see [https://repl.it/JWN0/3](https://repl.it/JWN0/3) for an example)

</comment><comment><USER3> But what are the criteria to make a link Spoopy? It would be great to see what the link I just tried to check fails on exactly. Perhaps if my website was found to be Spoopy, I know what I can do to fix it?

</comment><comment><USER4> Remember you need to validate your input has a safe prefix:

* [https://spoopy.link/file:///etc/motd](https://spoopy.link/file:///etc/motd)

<comment><AUTHOR> For the purposes of this project I'm not sure that `file:` is a safe uri prefix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> No https allowed in search?

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice!</comment>


Obama's CTO Digg-like site - <AUTHOR> http://obamacto.org/ <comment><USER2> Sigh... I haven't a clue what this has to do with hackers or HN. On top of that this exact site was already submitted and voted up to the front page just a week ago.

See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=361732>

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Also please note that this site is, in no way, affiliated with the government or Obama. I see a lot of people getting this confused.

<comment><USER2> I was actually wondering that myself because of the .org name. Thanks for pointing that out. I guess the site is even less relevant now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a repost, and it's just using UserVoice with a custom logo ..

<comment><USER5> Exactly - UserVoice is a suggestion tracker and I'm sure this isn't official. Still got 6 points though :?</comment></comment>


Apple Watch: What living with it is really like - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/video/apple-watch-what-living-with-it-is-really-like/13DDE53D-4DF3-4EDD-A519-4B2E3CA4F11B.html

<comment><USER2> You mean to tell me smart watches are a gimmick? No way!

<comment><USER3> Why so cynical? Is there no value in notifications on your wrist? Is there no value in keeping your phone in your pocket at the dinner table? Every major selling point of the Apple Watch is true of my Pebble and we're inseparable but maybe I'm a sucker for gimmicks. What's the gimmick exactly?

<comment><USER4> >Is there no value in keeping your phone in your pocket at the dinner table?

What's the difference between being distracted by a phone at the dinner table and glancing to the watch ?

If I'm at the dinner table and ignore the notifications in my pocket, I won't easily reach for the phone this way. On my hand though it will vibrate/chirp away and knowing it's "just a glance away" I'll be more easily distracted.

<comment><USER3> My pebble has been very easy to ignore. Just like anything else in the background, I know it's there but it doesn't break my attention unless I allow it. It's also been the quickest way for me to stop an incoming call from disrupting a conversation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Parents Around the World Describe Their Children, in Charts - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/how-parents-around-the-world-describe-their-children-in-charts/274955/ <comment><USER2> When I saw the graphs, what I immediately noticed was _not_ how much emphasis parents place on intelligence, but rather how much emphasis they place on conformity. The article talks about both, but it talks more about the former than the latter. But I find the latter a lot more interesting.

Terms like "agreeable", "socially mature", and "well balanced" (versus "attention seeking", presumably a bad thing) can signify that parents place quite a bit of importance on how well their children conform to social norms and expectations. The article mentions bedtime rules, but this can also extend to long-entrenched traditions in "Old World" societies.

On the other hand, the fact that American parents don't use these terms, and instead use terms like "independent" and "rebellious", shows that American culture places a high value on thinking and living outside of the box. The lack of "calm" and "happy" might make life more stressful for parents and children alike, but at the same time, the term "adaptable" implies that Americans expect the world around them to change quickly, and when it does, you gotta change, too. America is newer and changes faster. It's not surprising that Americans value qualities that make people innovative, disruptive, and not bound by any rule that they didn't make by themselves.

As a person who has lived half his life in a society where being "well rounded", conformity, and obedience to authority are considered a child's primary virtues, I must confess that I am rather partial to the "American" style, tradition be damned.

Edit: There also seems to be a relevant difference between Northern/Western Europe and Southern Europe, just as there is a large cultural difference between Northeastern/Western U.S. and the Southeast. So maybe the comparison should be between industrial regions and traditionally agricultural regions, or between relatively secular regions and deeply religions regions, rather than between America and Europe as a whole. Seems obvious in some ways.

<comment><USER3> > As a person who has lived half his life in a society where being "well > rounded", conformity, and obedience to authority are considered a child's > primary virtues, I must confess that I am quite partial to the American > style, tradition be damned.

My observation is that the value placed on conformity is the US is astounding. Just take a look at the undergrad girls on any university campus. They all look so alike; it is almost as if they were wearing uniform, it's staggering. Also: the importance of "rules".

<comment><USER2> Compared to most other parts of the world except Northern Europe, I would say that American campuses teem with diversity. I agree with you that there's _not enough_ diversity, but there's still a lot of it.

Just take a look at the undergrads in a Chinese/Japanese/Korean university. It's as if they belonged to some sort of military organization.

<comment><USER4> The relative ethnic homogeneity in those societies is a factor here, I think. I might be harder for an outsider to appreciate the diversity of what superficially seems to be a very similar group of people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Putting your kids on a schedule is probably the best thing you can do as a parent to ensure your sanity and to keep your kids happy. Kids really do like repetitive behavior, and a good schedule is one of those[1].

There are few things that help you cope with those really challenging parenting days like knowing your kids are going to be in bed at 8pm, with 30 minutes of relaxing parent/child time before that. Knowing _you_ get a break is immensely empowering.

I cringe for the kids when I see them walking around the grocery store with their parents at 11pm. It doesn't surprise me that so many kids are unable to concentrate[2] when they are sleep deprived, overly stimulated, and jacked up on sugar (Lucky Charms is 40% sugar. Baby formula has more sugar than Coke.).

All that said, my kids are smart. ;) But what really excites me about my kids is watching them find and explore their interests. The word I would use to describe them is "unique".

1\. Sorry, no academic research to back it up. Lots of anecdotal experience from my own kids and those of others who have come to my wife and I for advice. Also, just look at how many times a kid can watch the same movie over and _over_ again. :)

2\. My wife works as a pediatric nurse. I have no doubt there are many kids (and adults for that matter) who are wired very differently and need help to fit into society's notion of how a kid should behave. I also think that we are doing massive damage to kids by all the sugar we feed them, especially in liquid form, whether it's milkshake formula or Mountain Dew, and that damage is showing up as a slew of problems, from obesity and Type II diabetes to cognitive issues. However, those are going to be exceedingly difficult to prove, and powerful interests (from the USDA to food producers) will do everything they can to distract people from proving it.

<comment><USER6> > Baby formula has more sugar than Coke.

Based on the nutrition info I found with a couple minutes googling, this seems incorrect.

[http://productnutrition.thecoca- colacompany.com/products/coc...](http://productnutrition.thecoca- colacompany.com/products/coca-cola)

<http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/baby-foods/440/2>

<http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/baby-foods/452/2>

The second one there comes close, but they all seem to be in the same basic range as human breast milk:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_breast_milk#Composition>

<comment><USER7> It's kind of funny that there is the whole formula-vs-breast-milk debate. Especially since there are so many people that have this odd notion that formula is safer than breast milk (some even thinking that breast milk is detrimental to a child's health -- e.g. "Your child will die or have defects if you feed it breast milk").

The truth is that formula is useful as a substitute for breast milk, but it's not a complete substitute. We should probably be leaning towards breast milk unless there is a reason not to.

We should probably rid ourselves of notions like:

* Formula is _obviously_ better than breast milk because... _science!_

* Feeding your baby formula is a sign of wealth (much like wet-nurses in the past) because only poor people that can't afford formula breast-feed (i.e. breast milk is 'free' therefore obviously isn't as good).

* Breast-feeding is harmful to children because seeing a breast will scar them for life.

<comment><USER5> I believe the first two were injected into our culture through a lot of marketing dollars paid by the companies selling formula. I find it odd that people could believe food companies could do better in 40 years than nature did in millions of years of evolution or God did in designing people (take your pick, breast milk still seems arguably better).

One of my kids was raised on formula, the others had it to augment breast milk. I don't think there is anything wrong with using formula, but I do think the majority of the inexpensive formula out there isn't much different that giving your baby liquified lucky charms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A fantastic example of horrible information visualization. Those bar charts are almost useless. The colors don't seem to correspond to anything, the ranking is apparently random, and the x-axis scale varies wildly, making cross-country comparisons an exercise in mental arithmetic.

<comment><USER9> I came here to say exactly that. They make a point of using the same colors in each chart (mostly), giving the illusion of some correspondence, but the colors mean something different for each chart. For example, "Difficult" and "Agreeable" are the same color in the first two charts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> From what I remember from my childhood in the UK, I'd say that Britain is very close to America. Everyone focussed on "intellect" there, and my friends there broadly use the American strategies (hyper + TV).

I've noticed the difference in The Netherlands. My wife was just this afternoon planning the bedtime rooster for our first child (due in September!). I put it down to her Dutch tick for planning/organization.

What is true is that the maternity/paternity system here is awesome: it's like society has accepted that yes, people do have kids. And, if we all want to keep working (and share the job of raising the nippers), then we need to make some pragmatic decisions. Like be flexible with work time, and have subsidised childcare.

<comment><USER11> After living in both countries my whole life, as a Brit, I can honestly say that Britain is not very close to America at all. Maybe on the surface, the popular culture (mostly because of Hollywood & TV) and the language are similar, but that's about where the main similarities end, and the subtitles begin.

What George Bernard Shaw said was true. England and America _are_ two countries separated by a common language.

<comment><USER12> I'd be very interested to hear you expand on this.

<comment><USER11> Because i'm not eloquent or articulate, I'll refer you to my favourite travel writer - Mr. Bill Bryson. He's lived in both countries his whole life and has made a living writing about the (mostly funny) subcultures of each.

I recommend starting with "Notes from a small island".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Upon first review it was quite interesting to compare how countries perceive themselves, but when trying to compare countries to each other I realized that the x-axis and y-axis are different for each country.

For example the first quote says "A fascinating new study reveals that Americans are more likely to call their children 'intelligent'", but in fact a higher percentage of parents in Australia say their children are more intelligent.

Parents in Spain think their kids are really really easy.

<comment><USER14> Australia gets a mention but after that I think it just gets lumped in with Europe. You don't think they got confused with Austria do you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I always wonder how much of the attitude measured among modern parents in the U.S. is due to the number of people who have an only child, and do so later in life.

When you have more than one child, I think you're more realistic about their personalities and capabilities, because you can compare them. When you have just one, everything they do is extraordinary. When you have more, you see them more as a bunch of morons who get things right occasionally through random chance.

Not to mention, since we in the U.S. don't typically have large broods, most people have very little experience with children at all and are shocked at what they are capable of, because it doesn't really fit with the preconceived notion of what a "child" is.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not a single mention of "whinging sods", which makes me suspect this study is inaccurate.

</comment><comment><USER17> An interesting read is "Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent" by Meredith Small.

It touches on a lot of the ideas in this article, in much greater depth, and looking across a wider range of cultures and continents.

In short, if you find this article interesting, I would highly recommend the book.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is there a relationship between the colors on the graphs? Every graph has different value scale. Hard to compare values between graphs, which is the whole point of the article.

</comment><comment><USER19> Fascinating narrative but was this a true "research study" in which hundreds or thousands of families were given the same questions? I can't find it in the study text, which reads more like a book chapter than a study. I can't find it in the article, nor do I see it in the Slate interview.

Can anyone else find the actual text that says, "We surveyed this many families and asked them these specific questions"?

<comment><USER20> It reads like a book chapter because it is a book chapter:

"Themes and Variations: Parental Ethnotheories in Western Cultures ... to appear in: Rubin, K. (Ed.), Parental beliefs, parenting, and child development in cross-cultural perspective. New York: Psychology Press."

[http://brown.edu/Departments/Human_Development_Center/Roundt...](http://brown.edu/Departments/Human_Development_Center/Roundtable/Harkness.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So, considering parent bias, does this basically show what each cultures' parents value in their kids, or perhaps in people in general?

</comment><comment><USER22> Another similar and interesting set of data to look at is baby naming trends. Freakonomics Radio's most recent episode covers the subject with some depth: [http://www.freakonomics.com/2013/04/08/how-much-does-your- na...](http://www.freakonomics.com/2013/04/08/how-much-does-your-name-matter- a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/)

</comment><comment><USER23> The language in the Atlantic blag is out of control. The free language study used 60 families from each region, so maybe 120 descriptions.

So the difference between 5% and 10% is 5 or 6 or 7 of the participants, not "far more likely" and such.

A reasonable conclusion from the study is that people don't particularly use common descriptions for their children.

</comment><comment><USER24> The study:

[http://brown.edu/Departments/Human_Development_Center/Roundt...](http://brown.edu/Departments/Human_Development_Center/Roundtable/Harkness.pdf)

I don't see anything about controlling for variables, experiment design, confidence intervals etc. This is an ethnographic study, not a random survey. Don't treat it like one.

</comment><comment><USER25> Happy doesn't even rate on the American graph.

A lot of American parents I meet go on and on about how smart and fantastic their children are. They even have bumper stickers announcing that their offspring are honor students at some school. I never hear about how they are well adjusted and happy.

</comment><comment><USER26> To work longer hours is NOT the same as being more industrious, as suggested by the article.

</comment><comment><USER27> Strange that they didn't conduct any studies in parts of Asia, what with the cultural differences between East and West.

</comment><comment><USER28> am I the only one bothered that these charts arn't sorted...

</comment><comment><USER29> n = 10 per country.

"Any other armchair ethnographers care to weigh in?"

Indeed.

</comment><comment><USER30> Somehow I find that "easy" attitude to mean something different. lol.

Especially since there is not really any context to it. Also kind of strange how the only ones who are rebellious are US?

<comment><USER31> I don't know, it seems pretty clear to me that it means "easy to manage/low- maintenance".

We can't tell if the only ones who are rebellious are US, from the article. What we _can_ tell is that US parents consider their children rebellious.</comment></comment>


The Twitter Hack – What Happened? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lucky225/the-twitter-hack-what-exactly-happened-d8740d33c1c <comment><USER2> im kind of the inside for this (but not inside enough to actually know the details) Its been really funny to watch people speculate on this, and be so far off with their guesses and assumptions.

More seriously really highlights how much on the internet i should be taking seriously.

I guess its like reading general news on a topic you know about and they get it wrong, in huge or subtle ways, then you move on to a topic you don't know about and you think hey this reporter is probably legit...</comment>


The largest database of free icons available in PNG, SVG, EPS, PSD - <AUTHOR> http://www.flaticon.com/ <comment><USER2> The licence for this says you can't include flaticon contents in an online file? Doesn't this preclude <img src>?</comment>


The healthy startup founder - <AUTHOR> http://www.erickarjaluoto.com/blog/the-healthy-startup-founder/ <comment><USER2> I love the idea of setting an hourly timer to do something physical like 50 jumping jacks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using an app called Chime, for the reminders. You can find it here: [https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/chime/id414830146?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/chime/id414830146?mt=8)</comment></comment>